Science & Global Change Practicum: The Viability of Carbon Sequestration Methods on Farms
Science & Global Change Practicum Reflection Paper
My experience with my practicum was thorough and allowed me to hone in on my data analysis skills and my independent research, all while doing an activity I care about and believe is important in modern-day farming. My topic was about total organic carbon and soil sequestration, specifically the effects two different farming methods had on the total organic carbon amount in a soil sample. My practicum site was on school grounds and at my house, everything outside except a few steps.
I found my site supervisor through my AOSC360 class, as for my final we had chosen a sequestration project because of its appeal to both me and my partners interests, and found out that my supervisor had a lab relating to these things, and was invited on, creating my very own research problem and in turn my very own specialized internship. To future SGC Scholars, I would implore you to go out and really badger people, ask around and make connections. Connections come in unexpected ways and flow to unexpected places, so be on the lookout, as every opportunity to get connected is one that might make your practicum or change the course of your life.
My role at this site was to investigate carbon sequestration through acid digestion and loss on ignition methods, evacuating inorganic and organic carbon from the samples I collected. To do this, the samples were heated to remove any excess water, and then treated with hydrochloric acid to cause the inorganic carbon to react to form gases that escaped the container. After this step, only inert material and organic carbon remained, and the mass was written down. Then, a bunsen burner running at 1200 degrees Celsius was used to burn away the organic carbon from the sample. Subtracting the final weight from the weight previously written down yielded the total organic carbon amount in that sample. The more organic carbon, the better the method. What I found was that the no till methodology was definitely better at sequestering carbon than tillage, as shown by my multiple graphs, but was definitely more expensive to uphold.
As more of a learning experience, this project gave me quite a bit of insight into data collection and how certain carbon sequestration methods work, how they are implemented and their effectiveness and costliness. Additionally, this project allowed me to learn data analysis skills such as finding ways to generalize data across sets and normalize information from multiple sources, as the sequestration change percent is a novel new way of doing so here. I also honed in on my independent research skills here, as the knowledge of the workings and importance of these methods is crucial for the next step in my self research, listed above. This experience really made me understand how complex seemingly simple parts of the world are, how intricate everything is, and importantly how everything can be improved if the right analysis is done. Furthermore, it showed me exactly why im so interested in natural science anyway; its applicability to problems in
I feel like I may move more into the atmospheric/earthen sciences rather than oceanic, as real, physical properties of land seem more interesting to me after this research. This experience is useful in getting jobs in the future as doing self-research and learning data collection and physically performing earth chemistry and such is a very crucial skill, and allows me to really connect with the work I do by understanding through doing..
